Airport
Paris Orly Airport (ORY)
Orly is the older and nearer of the two Paris airports, and for most of its life its weakness was the journey: close to the city, awkward to reach without changing trains. A Metro line runs into the airport itself, which makes Orly the easiest arrival in Paris for anyone staying on the Left Bank or in the south. It stays a compact, single-site airport with a personality of its own — domestic, Mediterranean, island-facing — and one hard constraint no other French airport shares.
Updated 2026-09-22
- CodesORY · LFPO
- Passengers per year (2022)29,187,269
- Elevation89 m
- ServesParis
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Four halls, one building, one free shuttle
Orly numbers its halls where Charles de Gaulle letters them. Terminal 1, Terminal 2 and Terminal 3 run together as one continuous western building, joined so that you can walk the whole length under cover; Terminal 4 is the older hall standing apart at the southern end. The naming changed some years ago, so older signs and guidebooks still say Ouest and Sud — trust the boarding pass.
A free shuttle bus loops between the western halls and Terminal 4, calling at the car parks and the airport hotel, and the automated Orlyval people mover covers the same hop at no charge if you would rather take a train. None of it takes long: Orly is small enough that changing buildings is a nuisance rather than a risk to a connection.
Into the city: the Metro, the Orlyval link and the tram
Metro Line 14 runs from the airport into the heart of the city without a change, calling at Gare de Lyon and Châtelet, and it is the reason arriving at Orly stopped being a chore. It is an ordinary automated Metro line rather than an airport express, which means an ordinary ticket and frequent trains. For most central addresses it is the obvious answer.
The older routes still work and sometimes win. Orlyval, the small driverless shuttle, climbs out to Antony station for the RER B, which is the quickest way north or on to the other airport; the T7 tram crawls across the southern suburbs to the end of another Metro line. The taxi rank charges the same kind of fixed, prefecture-set airport price as its counterpart across the city, except that here the Left Bank is the cheaper of the two, because it is the near side.
What actually flies from Orly
Orly is not a global connecting hub and has never tried to be. It is where France flies to itself — the domestic network, Corsica, the mountain and coastal airports — and across the Mediterranean to North Africa, with a heavy low-cost presence that makes it the natural departure point for a weekend away. The result is an airport of point-to-point travellers rather than transfer passengers.
Its long-haul is its own category. Rather than a hub network, Orly carries the transatlantic and Indian Ocean routes to the French overseas departments, flown largely by French independent carriers, and those departures give the airport a rhythm no other French terminal has. Airline allocations between the two Paris airports do shift, so a fare comparison should always check which one a ticket actually uses.
The curfew, the dawn wave and a night at the airport
Orly sits inside the built-up southern suburbs, and the price of that convenience is a legally binding night curfew: aircraft may not take off or land during the small hours, and it is enforced rather than advisory. No other major French airport works this way. It has two practical consequences — no red-eye arrivals to catch you out, and a departure wave that begins the instant the curfew lifts, which is when the security lines are worst.
That dawn wave is what makes the airport hotels worth considering. A handful sit on the airport road with their own shuttles into the loop, and they are the sensible answer to a departure timed to the minute the runway reopens. The terminals are not built for sleeping and the building genuinely quietens overnight, so an overnight wait here is a poorer plan than it sounds.
Arrivals, the border and the drive out
Much of what lands here comes from inside the Schengen area, and those passengers meet no frontier at all: gate, belt, door. North African and long-haul services are the exception and pass through immigration, where a chipped passport on the approved list opens a self-service gate and everybody else waits for a desk. Whether your own nationality has to arrange anything before it boards is a question for France's entry rules.
Car hire desks sit in the terminals rather than a remote compound, which makes Orly the easier of the two Paris airports to drive out of. The motorway heads south from the airport gate towards the Loire, and the same road leads back into a city whose centre punishes cars — a car picked up here is for leaving Paris, not arriving in it. For anywhere further, the airport joins the national rail network through the Metro rather than a station of its own.
Practical: connectivity, money and the small stuff
A travel eSIM switched on as the wheels touch down spares you the one errand nobody enjoys, and the free airport network will get one running if you did not think of it earlier. For cash, the machines belonging to actual banks beat the standalone brands, and every one of them will ask whether to convert the amount for you — the answer is no, for reasons the France money guide sets out.
Shoppers claiming a refund on the way out need the paperwork stamped while the goods are still in hand, which puts that desk ahead of the check-in queue rather than beyond security. Step-free assistance has to be requested from the airline in advance and is met at marked points in each hall, and the landside left-luggage counter is not something to count on overnight.